An occasional treat as you explore!
The hourglass and its associated “Time Well Spent” quests for the Explorer and Reporter classes are meant to be a fun “secondary quest/reward” as you explore news, game and profile pages on the site. They appear at random times and won’t necessarily show up all the time.
Questing suggestion: If you make the “Time Well Spent” quests your primary focus, they probably won’t be very fun, so we would encourage you to simply keep an eye out for them. Think Alice in Wonderland, where occasionally she’ll discover a potion or treat here and there 🙂
Where is the hourglass?
After you’ve been browsing a news, game or profile page for awhile an hourglass may appear. When it does, it will appear in the lower-right corner of your browser. Don’t wait too long to click on it because it disappears after 10 seconds.
Each time you click on an hourglass you will get a little XP reward. Even after you’ve completed the quests, the hourglasses will still appear, giving you XP when you click on them.
Below are descriptions of the Time Well Spent quests.
Time Well Spent – Games
Explorer Quest
Click on the hourglass 100 times while browsing game pages
Time Well Spent – Profiles
Explorer Quest
Click on the hourglass 100 times while browsing profile pages
Time Well Spent – News
Reporter Quest
Click on the hourglass 100 times while browsing news pages
Disappears too fast…
If I see ’em, I click ’em, but I still don’t understand what they’re for! (Not a long-time gamer me, obviously). I *think* they’re just to add points to your quests, but then that ##/100 makes me wonder – what happens when I get to 100 hourglasses?
Because the page content is mostly on the left, and the hourglass on the far right, I almost never see it. On a tablet I have to zoom the page to read the small text, which zooms the right edge of the page out of view. If the hourglass were on the left — or aligned with the text — or if I could choose a larger font, it would be more usable.
I’ve almost completed these quests. It would be nice if there were a follow-up quest like having 1000 hourglasses. Also it would be nice if the amount of hourglasses that give XP each day is increased according to your Explorer or Reporter level (or is that already the case?).
It is great that the hourglasses keep popping up, even after you have finished one of the quests! It has become part of the atmosphere when reading about a game or going over a new review.
Is there an option to add videos to game? ‘Cause I haven’t found it yet :(!
I have not seen it much at all, going to take forever to get through this one.
Hard to be sure with the randomness, but it looks like the hourglasses appear on the “main” game pages where the reviews are, but not on the subpages with tips and discussion? That seems a bit odd…
I already see the difference! Thanks!
@Jim – Thank you for that update, and I like what you’ve done with the Hourglasses! 🙂
[update: 04-03-12] We’ve shortened the time variable for when the hourglass will appear, while balancing the fact that we don’t want the hourglass quests to be too easy to complete.
We’ve updated the text in the above article to reflect the changes we’ve made, and have decided to keep the specific timing details a secret 🙂
@Lozmoid, Thanks for the additional feature ideas. I’m planning on writing another community discussion article soon where we’ll be asking for feedback and site suggestions.
Hey guys, I’m loving this site but I would like to make some suggestions, if I may?
Firstly, would it be possible to add a feature whereby players (I mean us) could contact each other via a messaging facility? This would be cool for further discussion or if someboday had a question they wanted to ask somebody else.
Secondly, would it be at all possible to add a forum for general discussion? It would make it easier for players to find answers to questions, as well as a more communal area for people to get acquainted, share ideas and stuff.
And lastly, I find some of the Quests a little too hard to acheive and their respective rewards somewhat low by comparison. For example, a player whos is at level 5 or 6 has to work hard to reach the next level and sometimes its a little downheartening to learn that some of the Quests only pay out 500 or so Gamer XP.
Anyways, just some thoughts. Thanks for reading! 🙂
@dylanreid: I have tried on other profile pages as well… but maybe now, when it arrive quicker, will it work. I shall at least give it a try! 🙂
@Elida – I don’t think the Hourglass pops up on YOUR OWN profile page.. other than that, I think it’s the same timer as the other pages.
Looks like some changes have been made? I see the Hour Glasses popping up MUCH faster now…
I have never gotten any hour glasses on Profile pages… How ever long I wait. Is it more difficult to get those than for the other pages…?
I´m excited to see what will be the updates too 🙂
The community become strength with all this feedbacks.
The problem I see with the easter egg idea, which definitely has potential, is that the goal here is to encourage members to read new content (and old content for that matter). By throwing the timers out there randomly to be found, you’re encouraging members to just hunt for the timer instead of reading and seeing the timer pop up while you’re reading the content. (and yes, I get the issue of fast readers not being on a page long enough for it to show… that’s definitely a legit gripe imo). The timer, to me, was always a whimsically fun addition that you’d see occasionally while exploring the site’s content, not the focus of your explorations. Either way, I’m excited to see what updates the staff implement! 🙂
We appreciate all the feedback, and we definitely want this quest to be fun yet not something that can be completed too quickly. We’ll be looking through everyone’s feedback here and then update the quest! I’ll update this article once we’ve made the changes. Thanks everyone!